In a year crammed full of RPGs, The Iron Oath managed to excel
2023 was absolutely packed with fantastic RPGs, and even a die-hard fan of the genre might struggle to find all the hidden gems. One of these titles is The Iron Oath, which left Steam Early Access in November — we covered it while it was in early access, but developer Curious Panda Games beefed the game up with several meaningful updates on its road to a final release.
The Iron Oath puts the player in the role of the leader of a mercenary company, freshly betrayed and looking to recover. Unfortunately, you live in a hostile fantasy world that’s under siege from dark forces. The writing and world-building are a little standard, so there aren’t many surprises in store when it comes to The Iron Oath’s lore. But that’s all right, because that’s all just set dressing for the real drama: managing a massive band of mercenaries, most of whom are so rude they’ll go ahead and pick up nasty injuries, die in battle, retire, or bounce because of low morale.
“A lot of [early access] was adapting to what the fans wanted versus what we wanted,” says Curious Panda programmer Chris Wingard, on a call with Polygon. “We had a plan laid out, but the fans had different priorities.”
“Our biggest update by far was our combat and enemy update, which was in March. It wasn’t something we were really planning to do, but there was a lot of feedback on combat — not enough variability between encounters and stuff,” adds artist Nick Mueller. “So we added a bunch of enemy variants and enemy elites to mix things up.”
The Iron Oath started with six classes, and now offers eight, most of which break from the typical fantasy mold. The Guardian and Ranger are both archetypal paladins and rogues, but the Valkyrie, Pyromancer, and Pugilist are all novel takes
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